


Meditation

by beingheretoo



Series: The Long Dusk [2]
Category: Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal Series - J.M. Lee, The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: Angst but also Fluff maybe?, Dealing with battle trauma, Garthim Wars, One-Shot, Post-canon (show), Pre-canon (movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:00:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27859481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beingheretoo/pseuds/beingheretoo
Summary: The Garthim Wars have begun, and the prophecy has warned of a long fight to come. Brea and Kylan work on transitioning from the last fight to the next.MeditationTrapped in the caves again. Wide spaces and shadowy corners. A narrow staircase, and where the tunnel leads. Very small parts of something bigger.POVs: Kylan, Brea, Brea, Kylan
Relationships: Brea/Kylan (Dark Crystal)
Series: The Long Dusk [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039537
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Meditation

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not sure if I'll ever get out a full sequel to _The Long Dusk_ but I do have a couple of one-shots bouncing around in my head, and this is one of them. It should also stand alone well enough; most of the important background info is explained in the text at some point. 
> 
> This starts out a little dark but it ends up in a lighter place, I promise ;)

******

Kylan’s fingertips swept gently across the paper, feeling the roughness of its fibers as the heat burned line after line of symbols into the page. The blue light of the dream-etch blended into the blue glow of the moss that lined the rocky walls of the room. With this final page, in the blue-lit darkness deep within the Claw Mountains, he finished another copy of another book, the Gelfling knowledge within it now slightly more secure in the face of the long, fateful century that lay before them.

He was so engrossed in his task that he didn’t notice that Brea had returned until she plopped down in a chair beside him, startling him slightly. Her eyes were tired and her face smeared with dirt. Wordlessly, she rested her arms on the table and dropped her head into them. 

“That was a long day,” he said, getting up to find a cloth for her face. It seemed like each day she was putting in longer and longer hours in the far caverns, working with the contingent of Vapran farmers trying to figure out how to grow enough food for the hundreds of refugees that would make their home in the Wellspring once the evacuation of Ha’rar was complete.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said into the table. She turned her head to eye the spine of the closest book, the original from which he had made his copy. “What are you working on?”

“ _Plant Life of the Endless Forest and Points South_ ,” he said, handing her the towel. “It’s the second copy, actually, so we can send one back to Ha’rar and one down to Amri. He’s still trying to figure out whatever that potion was that the Skeksis used to dissolve the Garthim.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said with half a smile. “Although hopefully whatever plant life he needs will be found in Points South. Now that we’ve more or less lost the Forest.” She took the towel Kylan offered and wiped her face before putting her head back down. 

“We still need someone to copy the illustrations though,” he said. “If you’re interested.” _Please be interested._

“I’m too exhausted to even think about it,” she replied. 

He held in his sigh. When they had first arrived at the Wellspring, she had found time each day to visit to the new library, scouring their notes on the prophecy, and occasionally helping the librarians with illustrations as they completed their great task of duplicating the collection. But not anymore. 

The exhaustion excuse was plausible enough though, with all the unexpected difficulties with the crops. _Maybe it really is just regular exhaustion today_. “Do you want something to eat?” he asked. “I can heat up the stew and…”

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Just as soon as I can gather up enough energy to get up from this table.”

 _No. Not just regular exhaustion. That was wishful thinking_. She had given up on her drawing shortly after they had arrived, and it must have been at least two weeks since she had last looked at the prophecy. But the not eating had just started in the last few days.

“Did you eat anything at mid-day at least?”

“I don't know. Maybe. I never know what time of day it is anymore,” she said, grabbing the original copy of _Plant Life_ and wrapping her arms around it like a pillow. “I spent all day in a cave trying to help disgruntled farmers coax food out of the dirt in the _dark_ which I keep telling them is not impossible but they don’t believe me, and quite honestly, I don’t believe me at this point either.”

 _Maybe if we keep talking about food, she'll get hungry_. It was worth a try anyway. “You don’t believe in mushrooms?” he asked.

“I _do_ obviously,” she said, her cheek flush against the book, “but I’ve never _seen_ one grown in a cave before. And I also don’t want to eat them exclusively for the rest of my life, but apparently that’s what we’re going to have to do for the next one hundred and ten trine.” 

“It won’t be so bad,” he said. He mentally flipped through a list of mushroom recipes in his head. “They’re good with butter.”

“Well, we don’t have any butter, because we can’t keep nebries because if they Darken, they’ll go on a rampage and kill us all. So we have nothing but bland mushrooms that we can’t even grow despite treating the soil with all sorts of potions and powders, and I don’t even know how many hours we were at it today because I haven’t seen the suns for months because I’m trapped in these tiresome caves.”

 _Ah. Trapped in the caves again._ If he could just get her past this, then maybe they’d make some progress. His gaze shifted to the still-open book on the table, his hands absent-mindedly flipping through the pages, but his mind focused entirely on how best to frame the next phase of their conversation. _She’s tired of course, but…_

“And I don’t even know why you're still here,” Brea said, interrupting his thoughts. “You could be in Sog or on a ship with the Sifa right now and you’d have the sky above you, and be free.”

This was a new development. Kylan was surprised enough by it that he found his words tumbling out of his mouth before he had time to finish his plan for the conversation. “I’m perfectly happy here, Brea.”

“ _Why_?” she responded, sitting up and fingering the title of the book. _Points South._ “Why would you be here if you could be anywhere else? It’s just as safe from the Garthim in Sog or at sea as it is buried under these mountains. You’re not Vapra; you don’t have to be here.”

“I’m fine,” he tried again, a little thrown by the pace of the conversation. “I’m more worried about you, so maybe we should…”

“And don’t tell me you’re still here because of me,” she said, “because I’m not worth it.”

“What are you talking about?”

She wiped at a tear and kept her voice low. “It’s too much pressure. I can’t be trapped inside these caves and also think about how I’m trapping you in here with me.”

“I made this decision months ago and I haven’t regretted it for a minute.”

“Well, it was a foolish one,” she said, “so maybe you should.” 

_I don’t know what to do._ He understood what she was actually upset about, which was _not_ this, and he wanted to help, but nothing was getting through to her. And the conversation was going too fast. And he was mad. He had gotten mad before but never this mad, or this hurt. _It’s the hurt. I just need to walk off the hurt._

Since he didn't know what to say, he said nothing. He closed his book, tucked it under his arm, and walked out the door.

******

Brea brought her head onto the table with a thud. She knew Kylan well enough to know that he had shut his book a little more firmly than usual, that his silence as he left had had an edge over his typical quietness. _He was really upset._ She hadn’t meant for him to get upset. Another failure after a day of failures.

She felt so very far from the person who had held him in the library that night all those months ago, whose mind had channeled his away from his memories of the Hunter as they searched through dreamspace for the lost song of the urSkek, the person who had been able to take care of him when he had needed her. _No, more than that—I’m not just a different person, I can barely function like a person._ But she pushed the thought away.

The point was that her duty had brought her to these caves behind the Wellspring, and this is where she belonged now, slinking in the shadows, trying to coax life out of the dirt and the darkness, hiding from the enemy, instead of fighting it head on. It was not the life that she wanted to live. She wanted to be in Ha’rar again, standing on top of mountains instead of cowering inside of them. But Seladon had sent her here, and she wanted to be a dutiful sister, so she had no choice. 

But he _did_ have a choice. It was _her_ duty to prepare for the Vapran evacuation to the Wellspring, not his. And even if she herself were stuck in this dark place, there was no reason for him to be stuck in here with her. Life in Great Smerth was carrying on as it always had, safe from the Garthim deep in the swamp, and now that the Mariner had departed for parts unknown, Sifan ships were safe at sea and docked at the handful of islands that dotted the coast, out of reach of the castle Skeksis.

Brea would at least find a modicum of comfort knowing that he was free, out there in the wider world, feeling the light of three suns on his face, smiling his gentle smile at Naia or Onica or one of his other friends who loved him just as much as she did. _He’ll be fine without me. Better than fine. He’ll be free._

But she clearly had not phrased herself correctly. And she couldn’t bear the thought that she had hurt him. So, despite her exhaustion, she pulled herself up from the table and headed towards the library which was, of course, where he would go.

The new home of the vast trove of Gelfling knowledge that had formerly been housed in Ha’rar was a large cavern whose ceiling was easily as high as that of the old Library. The cavern was lit warmly with the orange glow of granon seeds growing on vines crawling from floor to ceiling. Shelves two Gelfling high had been carved all along the walls, following a semi-circular shape that occasionally dipped into shallow nooks.

Despite having grown weary of the smaller caves in which she spent most of her time, Brea was even more uneasy in open spaces like this one. She let her fingers trace along the spines of the books on the shelves as she passed, following the curve of the cavern wall. The covers were mostly shades of brown, here and there green or blue or red. Occasionally she recognized a book as an old friend from home, and although she was too tired to read any of them, she anchored herself in their familiar titles as she made her way through the wide space.

She found Kylan shelving books in a shadowy corner, methodically removing each one from a crate, examining its title, and sliding it into place. She stepped quietly into the nook, so as not to startle him, as was so easy to do when he was focused on a task. Putting her back towards the wall, she slid slowly to the floor. 

“I said the wrong thing,” she said in a low voice. 

“It’s fine,” he said, sliding another book into place.

“It’s not fine. I just…” She tried to remember how she had organized her thoughts back in their room. “I just want you to be free. To go outside and see the sky, to feel the suns…”

His sigh was deep enough that she cut off mid-sentence. “Brea,” he said, “I _am_ free. I went outside today. I’ve gone outside every day since we arrived here. Are you finally ready to talk about how you can’t?”

Part of her knew that she had to, but her mind took over against her will, as it so often did these days. _No. There’s nothing to talk about. I’m fine. Of course I can’t go outside. None of us can go outside. The Garthim might attack at any moment, and the Gelfling must hide away in secret places, and one of those places is inside these caverns, and we need to stay here for one hundred and ten and a half trine and I need to be here with these close walls around me for the rest of my life._

Sheltering with the Vapra and the other clans inside the mountains was a survival strategy, simple as that. _And it has nothing to do with the Garthim knocking over the landstrider with me on it, barreling over me, nothing to do with my knife thrust into its belly and its blood spraying on my face, into my mouth, nothing to do with another one on top of me as soon as the last one was dead, with feeling my leg bones crushed into a thousand pieces, nothing to do with the broken, dead Gelfing lying in the dirt around me as I struggled to stand…_

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Kylan sliding the last book into place a little more loudly than necessary. He stared at the spine for a few seconds before looking down at her. “Or if you’re not ready to talk about it, that’s fine,” he said. “You probably need to work this out in your own time.” His gentle smile was back, but his voice was firm. “But please don’t project it on me.”

“I’m not…” _Oh Thra, that’s exactly what I’m doing._ It was time to face the truth. She owed him that much. “No, you’re right. There’s something wrong with me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I feel like… like I’ll never be safe. That I’ll turn a corner and one of those monsters will be standing there. Sometimes I really think that I see them. Everywhere I go, here or the other caverns, I look for narrow tunnels and high ledges and other hiding places and I can’t settle down until I find one, or two, or three. And I can’t find those kind of safe places outside. So I can’t go outside.”

She felt him slide down the wall to sit beside her, but she didn’t lean into him, as much as she wanted to.

“So I feel like I’ll never be a normal person again,” she said, playing with the fabric of her dress where it fell loosely around her knees. “And I don’t want to drag you down into the dark with me. And that’s the truth.”

“Brea, you’re a normal person.”

“I’m _not_.” She twisted the dress fabric and then untwisted it again. “Right now, Seladon is fortifying Ha’rar. Our friends in Sog are planning a raid on the castle. And what am I doing? I’m…”

“…making sure that if Ha’rar falls, the refugees who flock here will have enough to eat?” 

“But Seladon only sent me here because….” She released the fabric from her hands and rested her head on her knees. She was too tired to finish. Besides, he knew the reason anyway. How every minute in Ha’rar she had been looking over her shoulder, waiting for the Garthim to appear out of nowhere. The sleepless nights, for both of them, where she got out of bed every few minutes to check out the window that all was well in in the town below. Coming to the Wellspring was supposed to help, and it had at first, but in the last few weeks, the fear had slowly come swirling back. 

“Seladon sent you here because your people need you here.”

“They don't need…”

“They do. They trust you to look after their interests. And you may not be much of a farmer but you relate to them like equals in a way that your sister still struggles with.”

Her thoughts had reverberated around the same small space for so long that they were a jumble. She tried to separate them. _He’s right. Preparing for the eventual evacuation of the Vapra to the Wellspring is important. And maybe someday things will get so bad that we have to seal ourselves up deep within the mountains completely. But we’re not there yet. There’s no reason I can’t go out and stand under the desert sky. And if all goes well, we won’t have to stay here much longer. Just until the farmers are settled and the crops start coming in, and then…_

“I know that my job here is important,” she said, hugging her knees. “But once it’s done, I want to go home. I want to go home, but I can’t even go outside. What’s wrong with me?”

“Brea, you survived the bloodiest battle in living memory. You have to go easy on yourself.”

“Plenty of people fought in that battle, and they’re all fine.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face against her knees, “they just seem fine.” It was a terrible answer, but it was the one her mind supplied, and her mind was the one in charge, not her.

“How many people besides me and Seladon have noticed that you’re not fine?”

 _He’s right. Again._ Among all of the soldiers and paladins and regular people who had been swept up into the fight like her, she couldn’t be the only one who felt this way. But for some reason it didn’t help. She released her knees and sat back, her face turned to the ceiling. “I just feel so foolish.”

“You still have a bit of a limp from the battle. Do you feel foolish about that too?”

“That’s different,” she said. “That’s my body. This is my mind. I’m supposed to be able to control my mind.”

“What happened the last time you tried to walk out of the entrance cavern into the Wellspring?”

She closed her eyes. _I don’t want to talk about it._ But she had always found her greatest comfort in seeking the truth. She needed to find her way back to the truth now, if she ever hoped to master herself again. “My heart started racing,” she began, opening her eyes. “My shoulders tensed, and my fingers clenched up, so hard that my nails cut into my hands. I almost threw up. One time I actually did.”

She felt him gently run a hand through her hair, following the course of one of her braids. “Doesn’t sound like your mind to me,” he said. 

She opened her mouth to speak before closing it again. She hadn’t thought about it like that before. She slumped over so that her head was on his shoulder. _I’m so tired._

“I may have become more obsessed than necessary about the quality of the mushroom soil,” she said.

“It _is_ important,” he said, wrapping an arm around her, “but maybe we have enough time that you don’t need to lose sleep over it. Or skip meals.”

 _No, the skipping meals is because of the constant feeling of dread in my stomach._ “I don’t know if you know this about me,” she said, “but I sometimes deal with stress by letting myself get absorbed into an arbitrarily-chosen task.”

“I seem to remember something to that effect, yes,” he responded. His hand gently grasped hers down by her waist and a memory flashed of the day—only a few months ago—he had found her stress-cleaning a stranger’s cottage in Stone-in-the-Wood. _I’ve never done laundry before_ , she heard herself say in his memory. _I just kind of got everything wet and hung it up._

She laughed, a real laugh, the first in some time. “That’s what made the strongest impression on you?”

“You were very earnest,” he said.

“But this time it’s so much worse than before. That was a single house in a single morning. This time it’s been going on for so much longer, and it’s not really working either. I think I hit some kind of limit on my coping mechanism. And now I don’t know what is going to happen next.”

For a moment, they sat together in silence. From outside of their nook came the sounds of other librarians shuffling around, filing, copying, making notes, even at this late hour. The warm light of the granon seeds felt almost like that of a sun behind her closed eyes. In the stillness of the moment, she felt at peace for once. _Maybe we can live here together forever in this alcove full of books._

When she looked up at Kylan, he was staring off into space, and she could tell he was working out something in his mind. Ever since they had first begun working together in the library back in Ha’rar, she had always loved watching him think. It was so calm and quiet compared to the way she thought, but somehow still so active and alive. She let him go a little while longer before prodding him. “What are you thinking about?”

His eyes regained focus, and he stood, holding a hand down to her. _A dreamfast, again?_ “We’ve gone through my memories of the battle over and over,” she said. “But I still…”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, gesturing upwards with his head. “What if we tried going up there?” 

The cavernous space that made up the new library was lined with twin staircases leading from the floor to a gallery several stories up, with three openings that had once led to parapets on the mountainside. All three tunnels had collapsed ages ago, and the staircases fallen into ruin, but after a patient few months, under the direction of Maudra Argot and some wise Grottan elders, much of the rubble had been cleared. The first tunnel had just been fully opened a few days ago.

It was an interesting idea. High above the desert, nestled in the mountainside, maybe she could stand under the open sky and feel safe at the same time. And she was fascinated by the tunnels, carved out of the living rock by the Dousan in a time long before living memory.

She took his hand and let him pull her up. But her mind, still beyond her will, immediately shifted to all of the things that could go wrong. “What if the Skeksis send the Garthim up the coast and over the mountains…”

“There are a hundred guards lining the Claw Mountains, ready to light the beacons if they see anything.”

“But the Garthim are black. What if the guards can’t see them until it’s too late?”

“Plenty of the guards are Grottan. They can see in the dark.”

“What if…?”

“What if,” he said, squeezing her hand, “you have wings, and if a Garthim manages to scurry up the entire Sifan coast without being seen and then climb the tallest, most jagged mountains in the Skarith Land, and then drop right down in front of us, we can just fly to safety?”

“By safety do you mean the middle of the desert with no food or water?”

His eyes sparkled. “We’d be safe from the Garthim though.”

She took in a deep breath and let it out again. “You’re right,” she said, “that’s weirdly my only concern.” 

“I know,” he said. 

_Of course you do_ , she thought warmly as she led them out of the nook towards the nearest staircase.

******

They took the stairs step by step. After the first eleven, Brea’s heart began to beat faster, and by the twenty-third, she had to sit down with her face back between her knees, and it took everything in her not to run back to the alcove. _But I want to see where that tunnel leads._

She managed to calm herself and they resumed their climb. She focused on the staircase, one worn-down step at a time. When first cut countless trine ago, each step had been a perfectly-measured rectangular slab, but time had worn variation of shape into each one: unique combinations of smoothed edges, hairline cracks, uneven wells. She let her mind fill with these details so that it had no room for anything else. 

They reached the gallery and entered the tunnel. It led to a short hallway where two guards stood chatting in the low light, and then to another staircase, narrow but straight, up to a parapet. _Good. A narrow staircase will slow down the Garthim if one does drop down on us; give us a head start to escape back down to the gallery, and then I can fly from there…_

Brea cut off her train of thought, but also did not regret thinking it. _It doesn’t hurt to have a plan, within reason._ Within reason. Just a few more steps, and she could already see through the doorframe…

“Oh Thra, the sky.” She rushed to the parapet and leaned over the side, gazing out into a night full of stars and the light of two moons, all reflected in the wide expanse of the Crystal Sea below. The soft wind picked up her hair and set it down again. At night, this high up the mountainside, there was a crispness to the air that reminded her of home. Far below, the Wellspring was alive with Gelfling going about their evening routines—visiting friends, returning home after a long day, wrangling beasts into stables and pens. 

“This is such a beautiful place,” Brea said in a quiet voice. “And there are people down there. And they’re fine. Everything is normal.”

Kylan stood beside her and took her hand in his. “Everything’s not exactly normal,” he said. “The Skeksis _are_ still a threat. But they haven’t defeated us yet. And they are very far away from here.” 

“From up here, from this particular perspective, that all makes perfect sense,” she said. “But I’m afraid that once we go back inside, I’ll lose all sense again. I don’t know. I feel so very far from the person I used to be.”

“I think that’s normal?” he said. “I’m not sure what kind of life it is that leaves you the same at the end as at the beginning.”

“I know,” she said. “We’ve been through so much in the last few months, it’s foolish to think we’d be the same people as when we started. But you came out of everything so much more at peace with yourself, and I… look at me.”

“Well,” he began, “we had very different experiences on the night of the prophecy. I played some music with my friends and had a life-altering spiritual experience, while you got caught up in a horrific battle and almost died.” His tone had started out light, but by the last few words his voice wavered.

“It’s not the part about the battle,” she said softly, tightening her grip on his hand. “If I had known about the battle, had gone in with a strategy and a plan, I would have been fine. I _was_ fine, the first time we fought the Skeksis at Stone-in-the-Wood. It’s the moment that monster turned down the road out of nowhere, and there was no time, no plan, and for once in my life I couldn’t come up with one on the spot. I had no control over the situation. I like to be in control of a situation.”

He smiled weakly in response, but stayed silent, even though she could see behind his eyes that he had something to say. She nudged him gently with her shoulder. “What is it?”

“I like being able to solve my friends’ emotional problems,” he said, staring out into the desert. 

_Of course._ On top of all of the stress of her… situation, of course he’d be disappointed in himself for not being able to solve it. _No, worse than disappointed. Scared that if he doesn’t prove himself useful…_

She released his hand and wrapped her arms around him, suddenly enough to knock the wind out of him a little as he caught her. “I think,” she said, “that if I’ve got to go easy on myself for not being able to control my own mind, then you’ve got to go easy on yourself for not being able to fix me.” She pulled herself closer. “That doesn’t have to be your job,” she said. “I’m just happy you’ve stayed with me all this time.”

She felt the tension drain out of him and he let his weight fall into hers. Together they looked out over the Crystal Sea, sparkling in the moonlight, at the Claw Mountains sharpening into jagged spires as they stretched out to the southeast.

“But coming up here was a good idea,” she continued. “I feel better. For now at least.” 

She looked down again at the circle of Gelfling out in the open, sitting around the Wellspring Tree. A thought came to her, unplanned. And while she still, in general, firmly believed in the concept of having a plan, she realized at this exact moment, that she just had to let herself go. Don’t overthink.

“I’m going to go down there,” she said, nodding towards the town, the lake, the Wellspring Tree. She released their embrace. 

“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked. “Maybe we can just try standing in the entrance cavern and see how you….” His words trailed off as she squeezed through the balustrade that lead to the flight ledge and unfurled her wings.

“Oh,” he said. “That way.” He cast his gaze down the long mountainside and then back up to her. “Do you want me to…?”

The sweet thing was that he would ignore his own abject terror and go with her if she said yes. “Oh no,” she said with half a smile, “I’ll definitely drop you.” She held out a trembling arm. “But my wings are fine.” She flapped them once for emphasis.

“Do you really think this is safe?”

She looked down and tried to calculate exactly how many times higher it was than she had ever flown before. She had probably managed nine or ten stories in the past; this was at least five times as high. But the drop wasn’t sheer; if her wings grew tired there were rocky outcroppings that she could stop to rest on. Probably. If she could control her landings well enough. 

“It was safe enough for the ancient Dousan women who were stationed here,” she said with a shrug.

“But you’re a… current Vapran woman,” he replied. 

“We’re all one Gelfling,” she said with a straight face, touching a hand to his cheek. 

“We’re one Gelfling across clan lines,” he said, placing his hand over hers, “but maybe not one in… athleticism level?”

“I’m athl…,” she began. “Okay, I’m not athletic. But I’m feisty in a pinch and I can do this.” _At least I used to be feisty in a pinch_ , she thought. _I want to be feisty in a pinch again._

He let out a long breath, but his smile came back with it. “Be careful,” he said.

“I will.” She kissed him once, took a deep breath, then stepped off the ledge into the night sky.

On the chill night wind, she caught the scent of snow from the mountaintops, the scent of home. She let the wind carry her, her mind blank, her body reacting on its own to shifts in current and pressure. Below, the moonlight caught a thousand flecks of crystal across wide desert, a sky below to mirror the one above.

The flight _was_ a challenge; she would certainly feel it in her muscles tomorrow. But she cast the thought aside. Here in the sky, there was no tomorrow, or yesterday, only the now, a now where she was weightless and untouchable and free.

******

Kylan watched Brea descend to less terrifying heights before tracing his steps back down to the library. He realized that he had left his new copy of _Plant Life_ sitting on top of a crate, and stopped to pick it up and put it away. He flipped through the pages one last time, his eye falling on entries for grailgrass, ornly, shadowlock, the weeds and flowers that had always been underfoot in his childhood home, recorded in detail by a curious northern scholar back before he had even been born. Sometimes Kylan surprised himself with how little he wanted to go back, how, like the Vapran author of _Plant Life_ , he cared less for lingering where he was from than seeking out what he had never seen before. Not that there was much of a choice; for the forseeable future, these plants and a handful of speechless beasts would be the only living inhabitants of the Plains. He closed the book and locked it in his desk. 

Kylan worked his way through the maze of tunnels that led back to the great cavern that opened up onto the Wellspring. Outside, the dark waters of the lake reflected the light of the full night sky, the ripples of moonlight and starlight lapping at the trunk of the Wellspring Tree, which, although it no longer lived, still braced thick, bare branches against the heavens. It was the far side of evening—in the houses lining the lake, evening meals were wrapping up, and the shore was dotted with Dousan elders seated before the Great Tree for their nightly mediation, joined now by a smattering of Vapra and Grottan. There, on a rock closest to the cave entrance, sat Brea, safely descended from the mountainside.

Brea had never taken to the Dousan style of meditation. When they had first arrived at the Wellspring, she had very politely given it a try, joining Maudra Seethi and a group of elders on the shores of the lake. Kylan, seated next to her, had had to stifle his laughter at her increasingly frequent impatient sighs that were just small enough to be taken as normal breaths by someone who didn’t know her well. 

So it was no surprise that she did not join the rest of the Gelfling in their meditation now. She meditated instead in her own way, her mind taking in the small details of the Wellspring Tree, the stars, the ripples in the dark water, letting them flow through the pencil in her hand onto the paper. He himself had a similar experience whenever he tried Dousan mediation. He would sit still and close his eyes, but no matter how much he tried to keep his mind blank, within seconds it would be wandering along the trail of a song, either an old one he knew well or a new one he was still composing. 

Brea was so focused on her task that she didn’t notice him until he reached down and ran a hand gently through her hair. She looked up and opened her mouth to speak before eying a Dousan elder meditating the next rock over. She scribbled something into her journal, in a blank space between the stars and the branches of the Wellspring Tree, then tilted the page towards him.

 _I’m outside_ , it said. He smiled. 

Brea watched him read it, then scribbled two more quick lines: _Thank you. I’m sorry._

Before he could even think about it, he swept his hand across the page and etched a single line: _I love you Brea._ He surprised even himself with the words, and stared at them for a moment before shrugging. They were true enough. 

Brea blinked as she took the words in, but instead of a simple shrug, she leapt up, dropping her journal in the sand, and fluttered into his arms. Which, since he was not prepared for it, led to him falling flat on his back into the crystal sand with Brea crumbled on top of him. 

Stifling a laugh, Brea pressed a hand to his and sent the image of one of the Dousan cracking open a subtle eye in response to the muffled thud they had made when they fell. Kylan managed to choke back his own laughter, and the two of them lay there, trying desperately not to be noticed.

“What should we do?” he whispered into her ear.

“I’m not sure,” she whispered back. “I’m trying to figure out how to sneak away in a dignified manner so I can keep up the ruse that I’m some kind of a princess.”

“Any ideas?”

“No, I’m not a very subtle person. I’ve always been terrible at diplomacy.” Her hand swept gently across his again, sharing the memory of what he had only heard as a story before, of Brea very cleverly mind-wiping a Sifan elder, with Onica finishing the job by smacking him in the head with a teapot. _See_ , Brea said in their joint minds, _diplomacy._

This time, seeing these two women who he now knew so well, watching them being very much themselves, he was unable to hold his laughter in. 

“They definitely heard that, didn’t they?” Brea whispered.

“I’m too embarrassed to look.”

“Yes, let’s just lie here with me on top of you until they all go away.”

He strangely didn’t mind. The crystal sand was cool beneath his skin, and Brea was warm in his arms. For the first time in a long while, the tension she carried in her body was gone. The vast silence of the night encompassed all of Thra beneath them and all the stars above them. He lost all sense of time as they breathed together, two very small parts of something bigger, holding on to each other.

After a few moments passed, Brea whispered again. “All right, I think I have a plan.”

“What is it?”

“Just stand up and act like nothing happened.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“I’ll help you. Just act natural.”

With that, she stood, careful to keep her back to the lake and the Gelfling seated around the Wellspring Tree. As she dusted herself off, her face become impassive, as if she hadn’t just been lying awkwardly in the sand after causing a scene. She was, of course, much more dignified than she realized, capable enough of comporting her face to match the situation. _As if all those years of training, subtle or not, hadn’t sunk into her._

But as she reached a hand down to help him up, her impassive face melted partway into a smile. He took her hand and she pulled him up, turning him around so he stood in front of her, facing away from the lake. Before he could react, she leaned forward to whisper into his ear: _I love you too._ Still holding onto his hand, she led them back into the caverns without a single look back at the desert sky. But even in the dark tunnels beneath the mountain her small smile stayed.

The next morning Brea left early for the far caves, and he left slightly later for the library. By the end of the day, she had helped prepare a cavern's worth of soil for sowing, and he had made it halfway through a transcription of _Almanac of the Tides of the Silver Sea._ The day after that, she went out into the Wellspring at night again, and in the moonlight drafted sketches of grailgrass, ornly, shadowlock for _Plant Life_. After a month, the Vapran farmers had begun to see fruits of their labors, Kylan had copied seven books, and Brea had managed to venture out into the village in mid-day. After another month, with the Vapra contingent firmly settled in the Wellspring and enough books copied to fill two large crates, the two of them boarded a boat in Cera-Na and sailed home together to Ha’rar.


End file.
